Parkland, Salisbury voters to decide future of library taxes

Parkland wants to raise its levy, while Salisbury may ditch access to Allentown facility.

Voters in Salisbury Township and Parkland School District will vote on… (FILE PHOTO, THE MORNING…)

October 29, 2013|By Patrick Lester and Dan Sheehan, Of The Morning Call

Voters in two Lehigh Valley communities will have a chance to decide the future of their library taxes during the Nov. 5 election.

In the Parkland School District, voters are being asked to increase their library tax to help pay for a new building.

In Salisbury, voters will decide whether to keep the library tax that has been going to the Allentown Public Library since 1994.

Parkland

Voters in South Whitehall, North Whitehall and Upper Macungie townships will have a chance to weigh in on whether they want to raise the special library tax to fund a new, larger Parkland Community Library.

The library board is hoping voters approve a new tax rate of .2978 mills, which is about $29 a year for a home assessed at $100,000. That's up from $10 currently.

The referendum is rooted in the Parkland School District's decision to lower the millage it collects on the library's behalf — a decision that led to a dispute between the district and the library and ended up in Lehigh County Court in June.

For 15 years, the library has been funded by a special library tax of 0.3 mill, which was collected by the district. This year, after recalculating millage in light of countywide property reassessment, the district lowered the rate to 0.1 mill.

The change made no difference to the library's bottom line. It would have continued to receive the same amount of money as it did under the old rate — about $700,000 a year. Indeed, had the district continued to collect at the old rate under the new assessment, the library would have received a cash windfall that would equate to approximately a 300 percent increase.

The library took the school district to court, saying Act 1 did not apply because the library is not a school entity and the district is merely a collection agency for the tax.

A judge rejected that argument, and the library decided to bring the question back to voters, who approved the original library tax in a 1998 referendum.

The new library would be a 30,000-square-foot building on Grange Road at Grange Road Park in Upper Macungie. It would be more than five times the size of the current library on Walbert Avenue in South Whitehall, have a community room that could hold 100 people and a children's area as big as the entire library in South Whitehall.

It would also include a young adult section, group study areas, rooms for tutoring, a garden with seating for patrons, a local history room and a cafe.

Library board President Karl Siebert said he believes the referendum will pass if everyone who supports the measure gets out to vote.

"Once people know more about the new library, we find they generally support the referendum even if they may have had doubts before," he said. "We found that once people understand that the new library has so much to offer, they believe the value far exceeds the low cost."

Siebert said groundbreaking is planned for the spring — as early as March or as late as May, depending on the weather. The major permits for construction are already in hand.

"Once we have confirmed the referendum passed, we will start the construction bid process," he said.

Salisbury

Property owners in Salisbury Township have paid a library tax for nearly two decades, contributing about $85,000 to the Allentown Public Library annually.

Township commissioners this year questioned whether their constituents still wanted to pay for the service provided by the library. Commissioner James Brown has said he has had a library card for 18 years but never used it.

The tax costs about $14 for homeowners with properties assessed at $230,000, the township average. That represents a small portion of the overall property tax bill for township residents, which in 2013 was about $330, on average.

After the township approved the referendum for the November election, Salisbury Township school directors approved a resolution urging residents to support the library tax.

If the library tax is shot down, Salisbury residents would be shut out of the Allentown library system unless they pay about $40 per year to join.

Salisbury doesn't have its own library, so the tax enables all township residents to borrow books and other materials from the Allentown library. With the free Access Pennsylvania sticker on their cards, residents can check out books from any public library in Pennsylvania.

Renee Haines, the library's director, said mailers are expected to be sent out about the referendum and the library is planning to contact some of its users to urge them to approve the tax.

"Libraries obviously lend a lot to any community and the resources we provide can be helpful to all ages and income levels," she said. "I would hope that people in the Salisbury community would continue to take advantage of all of the great things we have to offer."